Maybe I have seen many old port cities in Guangdong and Fujian as well as many old historic small towns in China before, so I did not feel any special toward the architecture in this popular World Heritage Site of Hoi An; however, this city still has its uniqueness in my opinion. I arrived in Hoi An around 9 PM after 2 hours delay flight from Ho Chi Minh City and another 45 minutes wait on plane because of congestion at Danang Airport. I really relieved when I discovered that the whole town was peacefully quiet, something I really concerned that Hoi An at night may has the same fate of Lijiang or Fenghuang that historical towns become crazy club scenes. In the next morning I woke up very early since at 5 AM Viet Nam’s sky is already bright like 7 AM. I walked around the town admiring waterfront area where local fishermen were ready to go-out for day fishing, the very lively market and extremely charming and empty streets. Since there was no tourist, only locals and the souvenir shops were still close, I felt that Hoi An at that moment was an extremely gorgeous place to visit.

The yellowish Chinese styled shop-houses along the street together with decorative bushes of bougainvillea flower are lovely sights and very photogenic. Most of highlight buildings are merchant’s house and Chinese clan houses and shrines. I found that the clan houses are strictly built in “Min Nan Style” of Chinese architecture which can be found everywhere from Taiwan to Singapore. The layout of houses that claimed to be unique for not strictly complied with Feng Shui for benefit of better ventilation in tropical region are also similar to Malaysian Georgetown and other places in Southeast Asia. The French colonial influence is the only thing in my idea that makes Hoi An different from other Asian World Heritage Site port town. Another thing that I really impressed is the preservation of the whole town which is very amazing and very authentic, which is a thing that cannot be found in Georgetown, Melaka, Singapore or Macao. The Japanese Bridge is maybe the only sight that I found very interesting for its stories that Japanese built this bridge in order to calm evil serpent spirit “Namazu” that caused earthquake in very faraway Japan since they believe Hoi An is located on the back of the serpent. I further explored the town and strangely found that outside the inscribed zone, there still has many nice shrines especially the one dedicate to Confucius which has more unique and interesting Vietnamese elements more than the preserved ones in the core zone. Then I tried local cuisine, after read raving reviews in TripAdvisor, I chose to eat White Rose, Hoi An Fried Wanton and Cao Lao noodle. The foods except noodle were lovely and must eat.

I also noted that Hoi An is not only popular with European tourists but also Korean, Japanese, Australian and New Zealander. Also the late afternoon is the most crowded time when all the tour buses of Chinese and Vietnamese tourists arrive in town for few hours stop. After sunset, the whole town waterfront becomes a night market with many local foods. And Hoi An is very charming with hundreds of paper and silk lanterns. Hoi An at night seems to be a very popular place for pre-wedding photo shooting, as I saw many Vietnamese couples in their traditional dresses with their photographer teams everywhere especially around Japanese Bridge, so a great place to see local contemporary wedding cultures. All in all I really enjoyed my time in Hoi An for its lovely atmosphere and nice townscape. Even though the historic area is already changed for tourism industry but because of surrounding living areas especially the central market is still coexisting with historic area making the old town still lively with locals. I think this kind of urban planning is very good example for continuing the historic town development, a really contrast with Lijiang or Luang Prabang that freeze the towns by building new commercial area outside historic areas.